Why does an individual step forward to lead to people? For every person the answer is different. A few do it to survive. Some do it to make money. Many desire to build a business or organization. Others do it because they want to change the world. That was the reason for Martin
Luther King Jr.
SEEDS OF GREATNESS
King’s leadership ability began to emerge when he was in college. He had always been a good student. In high school, he skipped ninth grade. And when he took a college entrance exam as a junior, his scores were high enough that he decided to skip his senior year and enroll in Morehouse College in Aranta. At age eighteen he received his ministerial license. At nineteen he was ordained and received his bachelor’s degree in sociology.
King continued his education at Crozer Seminary in Pennsylvania. While he was there, two significant things happened. He heard a message about the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, which forever marked him and put in motion his serious study of the Indian leader. He also emerged as a leader among his peers and was elected president of the senior class. From there, he studied for his PhD at Boston University. It was also during this time that he married Coretta Scott.
SEEDS OF SACRIFICE
King accepted his first pastorate in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1954 and settled into family life when his first child was born the next year in November. But that peace didn’t last long. Less than a month later, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white passenger and was arrested. Local African American leaders arranged a one-day boycott of the transit system to protest her arrest and the city’s segregation policy. When it was successful, they decided to create the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to continue the boycott. Already recognized as a leader in the community, King was unanimously elected president of the newly formed organization.
For the next year, King led African American community leaders in a boycott with the goal of changing the system. The MIA negotiated with city leaders and demanded courteous treatment of African Americans by bus operators, first-come, first-served seating for all bus riders, and employment of African American bus drivers. While the boycott was on, community leaders organized carpools, raised funds to support the boycott financially, rallied and mobilized the community with sermons, and coordinated legal challenges with the NAACP. Finally in November 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the laws allowing segregated seating on buses.’ King and the other leaders were successful. Their world was beginning to change.
The Montgomery bus boycott was a major step in the American civil rights movement, and it’s easy to see what was gained as a result of it. But King also began paying a personal cost for it. Soon after the boycott began, King was arrested for a minor traffic violation. A bomb was thrown onto his porch. And he was indicted on a charge of being party to a conspiracy to hinder and prevent the operation of business without “just or legal cause.” King was emerging as a leader, but he was paying a price for it.
THE PRICE KEEPS GETTING HIGHER
Each time King climbed higher and moved forward in leadership for the cause of civil rights, the greater the price he paid for it. His wife, Coretta Scort King, remarked in My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., “Day and night our phone would ring, and someone would pour out a string of obscene epithets… Frequently the calls ended with a threat to kill us if we didn’t get our of town. Bur in spite of all the danger, the chaos of our private lives, I felt inspired, almost elated.”
King did some great things as a leader. He met with presidents. He delivered rousing speeches that are considered some of the most outstanding examples of oration in American history. He led 250,000 people in a peaceful march on Washington DC. He received the Nobel Peace Prize. And he did create change in this country. But the Law of Sacrifice demands that the greater the leader, the more he must give up. During that same period, King was arrested many times and jailed on many occasions. He was stoned, stabbed, and physically attacked. His house was bombed. Yet his vision— and his influence-continued to increase. Ultimately, he sacrificed everything he had. But what he gave up he parted with willingly. In his last speech, delivered the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, he said,
I don’t know what will happen to me now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter to me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I won’t mind. Like anybody else, I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight… I’m not fearing any man. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
The next day he paid the ultimate price of sacrifice.
King’s impact was profound. He influenced millions of people to peacefully stand up against a system and society that fought to exclude them.
The United States has changed for the better because of his leadership.
SACRIFICE IS THE HEART OF LEADERSHIP
There is a common misperception among people who aren’t leaders that leadership is all about the position, perks, and power that come from rising in an organization. Many people today want to climb up the corporate ladder because they believe that freedom, power, and wealth are the prizes waiting at the top. The life of a leader can look glamorous to people on the outside. But the reality is that leadership requires sacrifice. A leader must give up to go up.
In recent years, we have observed more than our share of leaders who used and abused their organizations for their personal benefit and the resulting corporate scandals that came because of their greed and selfishness. The heart of good leadership is sacrifice.
If you desire to become the best leader you can be, then you need to be willing to make sacrifices in order to lead well. If that is your desire, then here are some things you need to know about the Law of Sacrifice:
